Machpelah Cemetery Offers Intriguing Tales from the Past
culture, history, machpelah cemetery, national register of historic places,
Machpelah Cemetery‚ atop the hill on East Locust in Mt. Sterling‚ offers its fair share of intriguing local stories.
Take that statue of Richard Reid. Legend has it that in the late 1800s‚ Reid‚ an area judge‚ was challenged to a duel by one of the defendants in his courtroom. He was torn; as a judge‚ he couldn’t accept‚ but as a man‚ he couldn’t decline.
According to Mt. Sterling historians‚ Reid stewed for three days‚ and finally committed suicide. Though the monument in his honor looks up Main Street‚ Reid looks away‚ as if he couldn’t face the town after his deed.
The cemetery is also home to a number of Civil War markers and graves of soldiers‚ and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Its Biblically based name comes from the 23rd chapter of Genesis‚ a reference to the cave where Abraham buried his wife‚ Sarah.
